# The six commands, and why the wording is exact

> A working dog's commands are a small, precise vocabulary — AWAY and COME BYE are each one command, not two — and getting that wrong is visible to anyone who works a dog.

August 18, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/working-dog-shirt

Six diagrams in a grid, two across and three down. Each one is an arm position and a dog answering
it — a small silhouette moving, sitting, or holding still. Underneath: `AWAY`. `COME BYE`. `STAND`.
`LIE DOWN`. `THAT'LL DO`. `WALK ON`.

Get one of those words wrong and it isn't a design flaw. It's a mistake anybody who's actually
worked a dog will catch immediately.

## What do these six words actually instruct?
A precise, small vocabulary for moving a dog around stock without saying more than a syllable or
two.

`AWAY` and `COME BYE` send the dog in two different directions around the animals it's working —
a matched pair, each one a single command rather than a phrase built from smaller instructions.
`STAND` and `LIE DOWN` both stop the dog, but to a different posture: one stays upright and
watching, the other drops flat. `WALK ON` moves the dog straight in towards the stock. `THAT'LL DO`
ends the work entirely and calls the dog back. Nothing here is a trick command — there's no `SIT`,
no `PAW`, nothing performed for an audience.

## Why is it worth being exact about COME BYE specifically?
Because read cold, it looks like two words stitched together, and it isn't.

"Come bye" reads to an outsider like "come" plus "bye" — two instructions, or a greeting. It's one
term for one direction, paired against `AWAY` for the other. Somebody who's actually stood in a
field directing a dog around sheep will notice instantly if a design splits it, doubles it, or gets
its pairing with `AWAY` wrong, the way a musician notices a mis-transcribed key signature before
they've read the whole bar. Using real trade vocabulary carries exactly that risk, and it's the
reason this shirt works for the people it's actually for.

## Why hand signals instead of just the words?
Because a dog working stock at a distance is often too far to hear anything shouted at all.

A whistle carries further than a voice, and an arm carries further than either — visible against
the sky long after a shout would be lost to wind or distance. The diagrams pair a body position
with each command because that's how the vocabulary is genuinely used in the field: word and
signal taught together, and a dog worked at range reading the arm rather than the syllables.

## Does this only make sense to somebody who actually works a dog on stock?
It reads correctly to that audience, and reads as a small mystery to everyone else, which is fine.

A dog owner whose one command is "sit" won't recognise five of these six words, and that isn't a
failure — the shirt isn't aimed at them. The gap between a working vocabulary and pet obedience is
the entire subject here, not something to soften for a wider audience.

## What's the difference between a working dog and a pet doing obedience?
The vocabulary, and what happens if the dog gets it wrong.

Obedience commands manage behaviour in a house or a ring. Herding commands direct a dog doing a job
at range, in real time, where a wrong turn scatters the stock it's meant to be moving. One is
manners. The other is instruction under working conditions, and the words reflect that — compact,
unambiguous, built to be shouted or whistled across a field rather than spoken gently across a
room.

## Can this carry a real trial society's name or judging marks?
The six commands are shared working vocabulary; a specific society's name and marks are not.

Sheepdog trial societies register their own emblems and event names, the way [any trade's
professional body protects its own marks](/stories/electrician-trade-shirt) rather than the
tools and terms of the trade itself. The commands belong to a tradition spoken and taught long
before any trial society existed to formalise it. A society's badge doesn't.

## Does it print well?
Yes — line diagrams like this want to stay simple and evenly weighted.

Each of the six panels is small, so the arm position and the dog silhouette both need to read at a
glance rather than in detail — one consistent line weight across all six keeps the grid feeling
like a single document rather than six separate drawings, and [a fixed two-by-three grid is its own
composition problem, not six unrelated pictures](/stories/composition-for-a-chest-print).
Olive, a warm russet or plain black all suit a single-ink print; the diagrams don't need colour to
do their job, and the caption type is doing enough already.

## How do I get one made?
Describe the commands at [JustOG](/) — which six, in what order, and how the diagrams should read.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

A gate post, a coiled lead, and six words that mean nothing to anybody who's never needed them.